


Impulse

by servantofclio



Series: Zoe Ryder [2]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 01:59:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10584063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: Leap first, think later? They're both a little prone to that. In reaching for each other, they forget about the AI passenger for a moment. Oops.(Sex and character study, set right after discovering the facility on Voeld, building around in-game romance scene.)





	

Zoe Ryder reaches for Liam out of purest impulse. It’s something about the lost look on his face as he stares at that holo of an old car, two million light-years away and drifting toward them, forever; or something about the yawning emptiness that surrounds her, sometimes; or something about the horrors back at that temple that she’s trying to blot out of her mind. Or all three, most likely.

Whatever it is, it only seems natural to reach out, to brush her cheek against his, and when their lips meet, she thinks, for just a second, _Oh_.

Liam’s lips are soft and warm and a little chapped. He tastes faintly of coffee and smells like fresh, masculine sweat, and he kisses her back with enough force and urgency to chase every cold, clinging worry out of her head, pulling her focus _here, now_ : on lips and tongues sliding together, her arm sliding around his shoulders, his hand cupping the back of her head. He surges against her and she leans back, pulls him down -- yeah, better, this is better, how the whole warm length of his body presses against her, how she holds up his weight. She winds her fingers into his hair, enjoying the crinkled texture against her palms while they sink deeper into the foam of the couch. Liam diverts from her mouth and nibbles his way down her neck -- fuck yeah, good, she pulls him tighter against her, sliding her hands down his bare back, lean muscle over shoulders, ribs, spine.

The thin cloth between them annoys her, twisting and catching, blocking when she wants to soak in all the heat of his skin. She squirms around, fumbling for the hem of her shirt, bumps him in the jaw and gets a startled grunt.

“Help me get this off,” she says, breathless.

Liam blinks at her for a second before a slow grin spreads across his face. “Great idea.”

Yeah, it’s easier for him to do it. She puts up her arms so he can yank shirt and bra and all up and over her head and _off_ , his fingers skimming up along her sides, and then she pulls him back down so she can feel him, chest to chest, skin to skin. She kisses him again, hard, hard enough that their teeth click together. He kisses her back, thumb stroking the side of her breast, and then shifts, dropping his head to take her achingly tight nipple into his mouth with a hard suck, tongue hot and wet against her skin. Her brain short-circuits for a second as she moans, rocking under him. Her skin feels too tight and there’s a deep, desperate, aching itch between her legs. She reaches for the fly of her pants without thinking about it.

Liam intercepts her, fingers closing around hers. “Hey. Can I?”

Anticipation surges through her. “Yeah,” she says. “God, yeah.”

He laughs, only taking a second to undo the clasp and zipper, and then strong fingers press against her through her soaked underwear. She groans and squirms, trying to get pressure in the right spot. “Damn,” Liam murmurs, sliding his hand into her underwear, yeah, that’s better.

“Up a little,” she mumbles, shifting. “Right -- yeah, there, there, right there, fuck!”

He cuts off her exclamation with another kiss, which is fine, she’s good as long as keeps rubbing right _there_. God, no one has touched her in six hundred years, and she’s feeling every moment of it. She hitches her hips as he strokes her open. Yeah, that’s good, too; she makes a muffled approving noise, pushing her tongue into his mouth while he pushes a finger into her. _Yes_. She wriggles, frantically, becomes aware of a growing, hot pressure against her thigh, and presses back, throwing her head back and groaning as his fingers work in side her.

Liam kisses the base of her throat. “Hey,” he says. “Pants. Off?”

“Yeah. Hell, yeah,” she agrees instantly.

They both scramble then to get the rest of their clothes off. She ends up just pulling one leg off over one shoe, leaving her pants and underwear both tangled around the other ankle, but that’s more than enough to free her up, let her spread her thighs and open up as he comes back to her. She wraps her arms around him, heated skin and lean muscle, feels his cock nudge against her, and then he adjusts and slides in. She’s so slick and open he just sinks in, easy. Zoe groans at how he feels coming into her, hard and good. Liam groans, too, a shudder rippling through him. “Fuck, Ryder,” he mumbles.

“That’s the idea,” she says, laughing.

He laughs, too, a full-bodied kind of laugh that shakes against her, in her, and she twitches her hips in response. “So come on,” she suggests.

He laughs again and starts moving, fast, urgent, just the right amount of friction building up as she moves with him. She hooks one leg over his hip, trying to pull him in deeper; he puts his hand under her other thigh, pressing up, adjusting the angle of her hips, and fuck, that, that sends his thrusts right against a very good spot, there, yeah, _just_ like that.

It seems like both an eternity and no time at all until she breaks, bliss spiraling through her nerves, and then Liam goes rigid before releasing, on a long, hard exhale.

And then they’re blinking at each other, still tangled together, hot and sweaty and dazzled. Zoe knows she’s smiling, helplessly and blissfully; Liam’s smiling back at her, brilliantly, maybe softer than usual.

“Wow,” she says.

“Yeah?” he replies eagerly.

She pulls his head down for a kiss. “Yeah.”

His eyes crinkle when he smiles. “Wow here, as well.”

“Good.”

“You bet it is. More like amazing, actually.”

“Yeah.” They’re still grinning at each other. Though – as the afterglow starts to fade, Zoe’s becoming more conscious of the fact that she’s naked and sweaty on a scavenged couch on the cargo deck. She twists her neck to look at the door, which, thank goodness, closed at some point. Hopefully before they really got going. Being caught in the act isn’t really her kink, and given her circumstances… shit. Probably not good. She says, “We should probably, um… get dressed.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, a little regretfully, and moves. Off of her, and out of her, and Zoe feels a little regretful herself. More so as she sits up to scrounge around for her clothes, and even through the lingering glow of endorphins, a certain lurching anxiety creeps into her gut.

“Listen,” Liam says from the other side of the room. “Nothing has to get weird here. Things get close on a ship like this. Things happen.”

“Right,” she says, pulling her shirt back on over her head. “Let’s, like… be discreet here. Don’t want to disrupt the rest of the team.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Liam replies. “Absolutely.”

Zoe tries to figure out how much noise they must have made. She’s really not sure. It was all a little… fast, and blurred.

And amazing, mind you.

She hikes her pants back on and grimaces at the lingering wetness. She’s going to need an underwear change pretty much immediately. She stands up, finger-combing her hair back into place. “So… cool, then.”

Liam apparently considered it sufficient to put his pants on, and is still standing there distractingly shirtless. “I’m cool if you’re cool.”

 _Cool_ is about the last thing she feels right now, more torn between flushed, loose, and a little guilty, but his smile is still dazzling, so she grins back. “Good. Yeah. I’ll, um. I’ll let you get back to it.”

“Yeah, you too,” he says, with a little wave of his hand.

Zoe goes before she can say or do anything else embarrassing. Her clothes are relatively unrumpled, at least, and an advantage of keeping her hair short is that it’s easy to fix bedhead. She has to fight to keep the stupid grin off her face as she steps out onto the cargo deck, eyes darting back and forth.

No one’s around. Thank goodness. Vetra’s probably in what passes for her office, but Zoe can hear Gil banging around in Engineering, and hopefully that was loud enough that neither Gil or Vetra noticed any other noise.

If anyone else were here… shit. Zoe’s lingering elation fades a little as she imagines Cora’s face. Zoe’s supposed to be a professional, team leader, Pathfinder. There’s probably a rule against banging a teammate. Shit, _is_ there a rule? Even if there isn’t, Cora would never. Dad would… fuck. She doesn’t want to think about Dad right now.

[It was so nice not to think about being Pathfinder for a little while.]

Halfway across the cargo deck, trying her best to look nonchalant, in case anyone’s looking down from the upper deck, Zoe realizes there’s a team member she’d totally forgotten about. One who’s inevitably aware of what she’s doing.

 _Shit_.

“SAM,” she says under her breath, passing through the door to crew quarters.

“Yes, Pathfinder?”

The sound of the title makes her flinch. And SAM always sounds so calm. It’s totally unfair, especially when she’s not feeling calm at all. “It’s not so much a Pathfinder thing right now,” she says.

SAM switches to their private channel. “What is it, Zoe?”

Private channel or no, she waits until the door to her own quarters is safely shut behind her before she says, “Did you, um…”

“Did I what?”

She grimaces and stares at the ceiling. “What did you, umm… take in from the half hour?”

There is a brief silence. Possibly a pointed one. “You do recall that I experience everything you experience.”

Zoe’s cheeks grow hot. She sits down on her bed -- her nice, spacious bed, which currently reminds her of all kinds of interesting things that can be done there instead of on a couch -- and braces her elbows on her knees. “Yeah, but you also said you can be multitasking and focusing on other things, so…”

Another pause. “I was indeed managing several processes and queries simultaneously.”

Zoe breathes out a small sigh of relief.

“Nonetheless. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I was not aware of your activities.”

She groans, burying her head in her hands.

“I redirected focus to other processes, but nonetheless, the experience was enlightening.”

“Enlightening?” She tears her head out of her hands in order to stare across the room at the small, innocuous holographic globe.

“As we have discussed before, it is one thing to have an intellectual understanding of the range of human emotional and physical responses, and another thing to observe them through you.”

“Okay! Okay.” Zoe shuts her eyes. “Can we… pretend you did not observe any of the things you just observed?”

“I do understand the concept of privacy.”

If she’s not mistaken, SAM actually sounds slightly affronted. Zoe opens one eye and peers over at it. “Right,” she says. “Of course. Which means we don’t have to discuss any of those activities, ever, right?”

“That is correct, as we have discussed before regarding personal conversations.”

She heaves a sigh of relief. Case closed, then, SAM pays attention to other things, and if SAM’s not going to raise the subject, she doesn’t have to, either.

But guilt prods at her, and she hesitates. “And you don’t, um… you don’t think I made a mistake?”

“Do you think you made a mistake?”

She grimaces at the very SAM-ish question. “No.” She feels good. Exhilarated, still basking in the pleasure of it, and… hell. A little fluttery. She likes Liam. They clicked from the start, and he’s ridiculously attractive, and… there could be something more, maybe. If not for the Pathfinder thing, for the fact that she’s supposed to be in charge of this outfit, she’d go for it, 100%.

But. There is the Pathfinder thing, so… “I don’t know. Back in the Alliance, there were regs about stuff like this. I don’t want to mess up the team.”

“It is not my place to judge,” SAM says. “You will have to come to your own decision.”

Zoe sighs. “Thanks, SAM, very helpful.”

“You are welcome,” SAM says calmly.

“Let’s just go back to not discussing any of this.”

“As you wish, Pathfinder.”

#

Liam feels pretty good for about an hour.

Who wouldn’t, after an amazing time with an amazing woman? Ryder’s smart, funny, good under pressure, easy on the eyes. He didn’t know her very well before cryo, but he’s had an eye on her since he met her. Thought about maybe asking her out. Once they’d found their golden worlds, he’d thought. Back then he didn’t have the first clue how spectacular she actually was, how much crazy shit she’d take on. And pull off.

Looks pretty spectacular laid out naked and gasping on the couch, too. This is why he takes comfortable furniture seriously. One of the reasons, anyway.

Next time -- assuming there’s a next time -- please let there be a next time – he’ll have to slow things down a little. Take some time. Figure out everything she likes.

“Hey SAM, can you send me the data on --”  

Liam stops mid-thought, realizing he forgot one crucial detail.

“Shit. Shit shit shit, shit fuck _balls_.”

“Is everything all right, Liam?”

Cora’s in the doorway, looking concerned. Serious Cora, always keeping an eye out to make sure nothing’s gone wrong. Liam forces out a laugh. “Hey, Cora. Yeah, uh, I just remembered something.” Just remembered Ryder has a freaking AI in her head, that’s what. No big deal. Nothing weird about that.

“Uh-huh,” Cora says dubiously. “Sure you don’t need a hand with anything?”

 _Yeah, Cora, give me a hand talking to SAM about fucking the Pathfinder._ “Haaa, no, Cora, I’m cool.”

“Okay,” she says, giving him another skeptical look. “I’m here if you need anything.”

Liam keeps smiling until she walks away, and then activates the door controls to slam the door shut. “SAM.”

“Yes, Liam?”

“About earlier,” he says, and stops, not entirely sure how to raise the subject with the AI. Awkward enough with the other person, let alone a third party along for the ride.

“I take it you have recalled that I share Ryder’s experiences.”

“Yeahhh,” he says, letting it gust out, and sits on the couch. In more or less the same spot that… yeah. “Sooo… you know all about it, huh?”

“I am aware of what transpired, yes.”

Liam groans and slouches down until he can lean his head against the back of the couch, trying to think of what he wants to ask. _So, was it good for you, too?_ No, not that, never that. _What did she think?_ No, no, no. _You gonna give me the shovel talk?_ What comes out is, “And, uh, are we good?”

There’s a noticeable lag before SAM responds. “I see no obstacle to our normal professional interactions.”

Liam squints, trying to parse that one. “You sure it’s not weird for you? ‘Cause it’s a little weird for me, you being in her head like that. I forget when we’re not in the field, you know?”

“Ah,” SAM says. “No, it is not ‘weird’ for me. And let me I assure you, as I have assured the Pathfinder, that I understand the concept of privacy.”

“Yeah, but…” Liam frowns at the ceiling. “What does that even mean? You can’t exactly turn off, can you?”

“Not precisely, but I am capable of focusing my attention elsewhere than on the Pathfinder. It is important that she have opportunities for real privacy.”

“Well, yeah, I guess so.” Liam considers. “Has to be weird for her, too, having you in her head all the time.” He hadn’t thought about it that much – well, he was there when they rushed her back to _Hyperion_ , so he thought about it then. But since then, Ryder had been up and around and seemed fine, and he hadn’t thought as much about what it must be like, suddenly having a passenger like that.

“Indeed. It has been an adjustment for both of us. Hence, I endeavor to be unobtrusive.”

Unobtrusive. Huh. “So, about today… you don’t, like, have anything to say to me? Or anything?” If he had made a move, back before everything went sideways, he would have had the old man himself to deal with. SAM’s not quite that, right?

There’s a short silence. “I really do not see the necessity of discussing personal matters any further.”

Maybe a testy silence, that was. “Yeah, okay,” Liam says hastily. “As long as we’re cool. And she’s cool. Cause…” Now that’s a shitty thought. “She’s cool, right?”

“I suggest you discuss that with her yourself. Was there something else you needed?”

“No, it’ll keep.” Whatever he called on SAM for in the first place, he’s forgotten it now. He takes a little time after SAM goes silent, thinking it over. Privacy. Unobtrusive. That sounds reassuring enough, sure. Ryder needs some space. God knows everyone else wants a piece of the Pathfinder. Still, he’s got to keep in mind. Ryder’s a package deal: AI comes included. Which gives him a little bit of a weird itchy feeling, even if SAM isn’t going to talk about it.

But. He’s got a pretty good feeling that Ryder’s worth it, weird AI package deal and all. Worth doing things right, taking some time about it.

Last thing she needs is one more person putting pressure on her, though. In fact, she could probably do with relaxing a little more often, and that gives him a couple ideas.

If she’s interested, anyway. Something to hope for.

#

Zoe swings by the cargo deck a while later, casual-like. It’s no big deal, she tells herself. She usually hangs out down there anyway, since there’s almost always someone around to talk to, or she can pick up a wrench and lend Gil a hand for half an hour. Nothing unusual or obvious about it.

So she saunters down and makes a little idle conversation, and sticks her head through Liam’s doorway like usual.

Her cheeks burn a little when she sees the couch. Good thing her complexion hides a blush.

Liam’s also there, poking at a datapad, and the sight of him concentrating on it, all serious, makes her smile. Makes her heart race a little, in fact.

“Hey,” she says. “Got a minute?”

He visibly brightens as he looks up at her. That also makes her heart thump. “For you, of course,” he says. “Come on in.”

She steps in, but she can’t quite bring herself to sit down. Liam maybe feels the same, because he’s on his feet almost at once, pacing with nervous energy.

He also shuts the door.

“About before,” he says.

“Yeah?” she says, holding her breath. In her experience, that first conversation after a fling sometimes goes great, and sometimes… doesn’t.

Liam shakes his head a little. “I meant what I said before, I’m a big boy. I’m not going to get clingy. That’s the last thing you need.”

He hesitates for a second, and Zoe can feel herself deflating. It’s good of him, to give her an out -- to give them both an out.

But right here and now, it comes home to her how much she doesn’t want one. And if he says they should knock it off, for the good of the mission, she’ll agree, but she’ll hate it.

“But I won’t run, either.” He stops moving as he says it, looking straight at her, dark eyes earnest. “So, maybe… keep this in mind for the future? No pressure,” he adds hastily.

Zoe lets out a breath. The knot of tension in her stomach loosens. An out, but an opportunity, too.

Actually, he looks as nervous as she feels, fidgeting, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. It gives her a funny sense of relief. If they’re in it together, that feels right. Good. Together, they’ve accomplished a lot already. “We both have a lot going on,” she says, the understatement of the millennium. “But yeah, I’d like that. Let’s not close that door.”

He chuckles and smiles, wide and true. “Glad to hear it. You know, this? This nervousness right here?” He circles one finger in the air, gesturing between the two of them. “Most normal I’ve felt in Andromeda.”

“Me too,” she agrees fervently. _Normal_ sounds really good, after all the _completely bizarre and off-script_ that’s been going around. Normal like sweaty palms, and butterflies in her stomach, and a silly smile spreading across her face that answers his.

To hell with what she’s supposed to be doing. They’ve had to throw the rest of the manual out here in Andromeda, and Zoe doesn’t want to let go of something that makes her feel this good.

“But I was thinking, maybe we should spend some time together off-ship? Just…” He shrugs, which does very nice things to his shoulders. “Doing stuff? Like seeing Aya.”

“I’d like that,” she says. Great sex is one thing. A really good thing, definitely, but that’s not all she’s looking for. A chance to settle down and do something normal sounds perfect.

“I hear there’s a place angara like to go. For drinks, talking, seeing friends…” He cocks his head, the invitation clear.

“Tell me where, and I’ll meet you,” she says.

They grin at each other some more before she walks out, butterflies fluttering in anticipation. It’s going to be a date.


End file.
